Mothers and Sisters are the Most Effective Sources of Support in Coping with Disease in Patients with Breast Cancer

Breast cancer could adversely affect the self-esteem of women, family performance, sexual role, and quality of life. Sources of support are considered as one of the most effective coping strategies against problems and consequences of breast cancer. The current study aimed at evaluating different supportive sources and their impact on coping behavior of patients with breast cancer.
The current descriptive, analytic, cross-sectional study included 100 patients with breast cancer. The instruments consisted of a questionnaire designed to measure the sources of support and another questionnaire on coping behavior with the disease. The data were analyzed by the Pearson correlation, linear regression, and descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) with SPSS version 14.
The mean age of the patients was 45.59 ± 9.1 years. Overall, 69% of the study subjects were married and 77% were housewives. There was a positive and significant correlation between the received supportive sources and the disease coping behavior (P=0.049). In addition, the mean score of supportive source received from mothers and sisters was the highest in women with breast cancer (3.86).
Results of the current study indicated that women with breast cancer had the highest rate of coping behavior when their mothers and sisters supported them. This emphasizes the importance of required advice for all sources of support available for patients; therefore, the patients with breast cancer could deal with their disease more desirably.